Michael Neumann: Israel-Palestina, resoluções e “soluções”

Michael Neumann: Israel-Palestina, resoluções e “soluções”

Mordechai Vanunu foi posto em liberdade

Mordechai Vanunu, o técnico nuclear que passou 18 anos preso por revelar ao mundo o programa nuclear militar israelita, saiu da prisão, no passado Domingo, ínforma a EFE,após cumprir três meses de pena por "violar" as restrições impostas para estar em liberdade.

Depois de sair da prisão Vanunu pediu de novo publicamente permissão para sair do país, informou o jornal "Jerusalem Post".

"Não sou cientista, não tenho conhecimento de armas nucleares. Quero ser livre e deixar este país", declarou.

Vanunu está proibido de sair de Israel, falar com estrangeiros e participar em chats na internet, entre outras restrições impostas depois de ele ter saído da prisão, pela primeira vez, em 2004.

A Procuradoria acusou Vanunu, de 56 anos, de ter violado as condições impostas para a sua liberdade em 21 ocasiões, entre outros motivos, porque se reuniu por diversas vezes com uma cidadã norueguesa com quem mantinha uma relação.

Vanunu revelou em 1986 os segredos de Israel sobre sua capacidade atómica e entregou ao jornal britânico "The Sunday Times" fotografias da central de Dimona, no sul do país, onde trabalhava.

Após fugir de Israel, foi seduzido por "Cindy", uma agente dos serviços secretos israelitas no exterior, e raptado pela Mossad em Itália.

Vanunu foi então levado para Israel, onde foi julgado por alta traição e condenado a 18 anos de prisão, 11 dos quais cumpridos na solitária.

"Eles deviam ir para casa", disse Helen Thomas e... foi despedida

Jornalista Helen Thomas deixa a Casa Branca - Mundo - PUBLICO.PT

Mas terá sido apenas pelo desabafo de quem já está farta de tantas estórias, de tantas promessas não cumpridas, de tanta hipocrisia e violência desnecessária, onde os presidentes do seu país, que acompanha há mais de 58 anos, fazem o papel de autores de co-autores ou no mínimo de cúmplices, salvo honrosas excepções, que a decana dos correspondentes de imprensa na Casa Branca, Helen Thomas foi despedida, desculpe, se "reformou com efeitos imediatos" segundo a Hearst News Service para quem trabalhava?

Ou foi por ter feito a pergunta incómoda que poderá ouvir nesta entrevista realizada por Paul Jay para The Real News Network, na 1.ª conferência de imprensa de Obama?

Nela pediu ao presidente Obama para que nomeasse todos os países do Médio Oriente que possuíssem armas nucleares.

A pergunta foi evitada por Obama, que afirmou não querer "especular".

Thomas afirma que o conhecimento das armas nucleares de Israel é público em Washington e que a resposta de Obama demonstra falta de credibilidade, explicando a importância desta questão para a política dos E.U. na região.

Finalmente, confessa que nunca mais foi chamada pelo Presidente, desde aquele dia, mas que se isso voltar a acontecer, vai perguntar-lhe se encontrou ou não, mais informações sobre armas nucleares no Médio Oriente, desde o seu último encontro.



Transcrição

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay at our studio in Washington, DC. Our special guest today is Helen Thomas. Helen Thomas has been a member of the White House press corps for over 58 years. She's covered every president since John F. Kennedy. She was the first member of the—. [...] She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and in 1975 she was the first female member and later became the president of the Gridiron Club. She's written five books. Her latest, with co-author Craig Crawford, is Listen up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted to Know Your President to Know and Do. [...] Listen up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do. So you've been telling presidents what to do for, like, a long time.

HELEN THOMAS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS, HEARST NEWSPAPERS: They don't take my advice.

JAY: Well, here's an example. President Obama—. First of all, welcome.

THOMAS: Thank you.

JAY: Thanks for joining us. So President Obama had his inaugural Helen Thomas question at his first press conference. And here's a little clip we're going to play from the press conference. [...] You asked the question. He avoids it, ducks. And then the microphone's there, and you're about to say, yeah, but what about an answer, and they take the mic away.

THOMAS: That's correct.

JAY: So President Obama really never answered your question about nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and obviously you were asking—.

THOMAS: It would be pitiful if we took his answer truthfully, because he said, "I didn't want to speculate." Well, the president is not supposed to speculate as to who has nuclear arms or not. He's supposed to know.

JAY: Well, obviously, we know he knows, and it's—this is this great "we know, and he knows we know we know."

THOMAS: I was testing his credibility.

JAY: So that's the—it's actually quite a profound question, because it goes to the whole US policy in the Middle East. Not only does the US have a kind of a double standard on nuclear weapons when it comes to Iran and such, but what do you make of Obama's whole Middle East policy? Is there a break with Bush here or not?

THOMAS: Too one-sided in favor of Israel. Ignores all the horrors that have happened to Palestinians—their country's taken away, thousands imprisoned for many, many years. We give them arms, we give the aid to Israel, as it continues to occupy and just treat the Palestinians like they're newcomers—and these are Europeans who come there who have no ties to Israel, to Palestine.

JAY: When President Obama was elected and was first discussing foreign policy, there was a suggestion from him there would be a new approach to the Middle East. He made his speech in Cairo. He suggested—not suggested. He said that Israel should stop any settlement expansion. What's happened since all of that?

THOMAS: He took the easy way out, which is to go along with Israel, which most countries do. They have the power, propaganda, and everything else to sell their point of view. Palestinians have no voice.

JAY: So in terms of understanding—what President Obama's done is nothing new. This has been the White House approach for a long time.

THOMAS: Well, he was accused of being a Muslim, which is, you know, the worst thing that can happen to you, apparently. And I think he was afraid of that kind of tie.

JAY: But you've been covering the White House, as we said, for, like, 58 years. Is there—talk about the whole history of the US approach to Israel and the Palestinian conflict.

THOMAS: I think that we had—when Israel was created and they declared themselves in 1948, I mean, Truman went along. They knocked on his door at three o'clock in the morning. He did the unheard-of thing to get out and recognize the state of Israel—and while we were still debating the whole situation at the UN. Left our own representatives high and dry. Well, every president has been confronted with that. Eisenhower tried to be a little bit more evenhanded. Nixon sent a man, an envoy, to the Middle East as soon as he took office. It was former governor Bill Scranton. And he came back after a fact-finding trip for about one month. He told President Nixon we should be evenhanded in the Middle East. Zionists went out of their mind, saying, what do you mean evenhanded? It's like I'm telling you, why don't you try to be fair? That report has gathered that much dust [inaudible] but it never saw the real light of day. And every president has been confronted with this issue. And it is an issue. People have the right to defend their own country. Two thousand years.

JAY: Now, Jimmy Carter, in the last few years, has actually—he was, I guess, the first person at that level to actually acknowledge Israel has nuclear weapons. He visited Gaza, he's talked to Hamas, and he's been saying there should be negotiation.

THOMAS: Hamas won the election. But if you read the news stories, they will say, oh, the Hamas took over Gaza, without ever saying it won an election. And former President Bush said that we would observe democratic elections. As soon as the Hamas won in Gaza, they shut down all aid, closed the doors, and so forth.

JAY: But did Carter—in terms of his policy towards Israel and Palestine, was he any different than all the other American presidents? When Carter was in power?

THOMAS: Yes. He got the first accord in the Camp David Accords, and Begin promised him a lot of things, a letter that will acquiesce to concessions. Never got the letter.

JAY: So President Obama comes to power with what seems like intent to do something different. What are the forces at play here? 'Cause we're winding up, as far as—I mean, you've said, and it seems rather obvious, that it's the same policies we've always seen.

THOMAS: That's right. I think American politics, pro-Israel. If you take a vote in Congress, maybe you might get five people vote against any further aid to Israel as it continues its occupation. That's about it. They control—they have fast power.

JAY: Who's "they"?

THOMAS: The Zionists.

JAY: And Obama went to AIPAC, the main lobby organization of the kind of right wing of the pro-Israel lobby, when he was running for president, and he said to AIPAC more or less what they wanted to hear, with the exception maybe of the no expansion of settlements. So he's actually following through on what he campaigned on. He's never really suggested a different policy, has he?

THOMAS: No, not really. He's following through, that's true. I don't think he's ever made any real commitments to the Palestinians.

JAY: In terms of what you understand about the inner workings of the White House and how decisions are made, are there any forces behind the scenes at play here to try to put pressure on Israel to have a different kind of policy? Or have they kind of given up on it?

THOMAS: I think President Obama gave up totally, early on. I don't think even tried. He realized he's going up against a stone wall. Why take that on when he has so many other problems?

JAY: So do you think that's it for his administration in terms of the policy towards the Middle East?

THOMAS: I think he'd just as soon forget it if he could. But more and more I think you can never escape the Middle East problem, as no modern president has been able to. At some point it'll come back to him.

JAY: At the next press conference with President Obama, assuming he calls on you—I don't know if he liked your first question very much.

THOMAS: I'm sure he didn't.

JAY: What do you want to ask him?

THOMAS: I want to ask him if he ever found out whether anyone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons.

JAY: Well, we'll see if you ever get a chance to ask that again.

THOMAS: I doubt it.

JAY: Thanks for joining us. And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. This is the beginning of a series of interviews with Helen Thomas, but they'll be kind of interspersed, not one right after the other. We'll let you know when the next one is.

IN DEFENSE OF HELEN THOMAS - on apologizing to apologists de Paul Jay

IN DEFENSE OF HELEN THOMAS - on apologizing to apologists - Reality Asserts Itself

NB: Na impossibilidade de traduzir, partilho tal e qual. Usem o Google Tramslate sempre é uma ajuda.

Paul Jay is the CEO and Senior Editor of The Real News Network. He is an award-winning filmmaker, founder of Hot Docs! International Film Festival and was for ten years the Executive Producer of the CBC Newsworld show counterSpin.

IN DEFENSE OF HELEN THOMAS - on apologizing to apologists

Helen Thomas was the dean of the White House Press corp. She has a fifty-year history of tough-minded journalism and is one of the very, very few journalists in the mainstream press who has had the guts to question US policy towards Israel. On Monday she was pressured into resigning, "effective immediately".

On Friday she was asked by a guy who stuck a video camera in her face, for any comments on Israel and she said, "Tell them to get the get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people [the Palestinians] are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, it's not Poland." She was asked where they should go and she answered, "They should go home, to Poland, Germany and America". The video has been making its way around the Internet.

This was said days after the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla that killed at least nine activists as their boat sailed in international waters.

She later apologized in a short statement on her website ""I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

Her apology was not enough to stop calls for her head from those who have wanted to shut Thomas up for years.

Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's press secretary, led the call in an e-mail Friday to the Huffington Post saying Thomas' comments amount to "religious cleansing."

"She should lose her job over this," Fleischer wrote. "As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling."

Perhaps Fleishcher should also add that he is someone who knows something about apologies . . . being the leading apologist for the Bush administration as their war led to the deaths of at least one million Iraqis.

But Lanny Davis, former special counsel to and White House spokesman for President Bill Clinton, went even further than Fleischer. He issued a statement on Sunday saying Thomas, "has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot."

Now, Davis should know something about apologies and apologists as well. TheHill.com reported that Davis led a lobbying effort against deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on behalf of Honduran business leaders. This is in defense of a regime that came to power in an illegal coup and is killing journalists and activists. Hmmm . . . defending those that kill activists . . .

Davis went on, "Her [Thomas] statement that Jews in Israel should leave Israel and go back to Poland or Germany is an ancient and well-known anti-Semitic stereotype of the Alien Jew not belonging in the 'land of Israel' -- one that began 2,600 years with the first tragic and violent diaspora of the Jews at the hands of the Romans," said Davis.

Thomas was not talking about Jews that lived in the region from Roman times. If she had been given more of a chance to explain herself, rather than the 30-second sound bite traveling around the web, she might have made it clear that she also wasn't referring to the thousands of Jews who lived in Palestine prior to 1948.

What Thomas clearly did say she was talking about was Jews that had come from Germany, Poland and America. Now it's likely that most of the Jewish refugees that came to Palestine from Europe just after the War, did so not because they "belong to the land of Israel", but due to fact that the American, Canadian and British governments wouldn't drop their anti-Jewish quotas even after the horrors of the genocide were fully exposed (let's talk about some real anti-Semites).

I don't know of any opinion polls taken at the time, but if those refugees had a real choice to go to some impoverished potentially war-filled land in the Middle East or join the Jewish community in New York, I know what I would have chosen.

The American Zionist organizations at the time did not fight for a more open immigration policy to allow Jews into America; they lobbied furiously for the Jewish refugees to go to Palestine as part of a move towards the founding of a Jewish state.

As is well known, this state was created in the process of expelling thousands of Palestinians from their lands, people who had nothing to do with the European genocide against the Jews. You cannot say the same about the Anglo-American countries that for much of the '30s were quite happy to equip Hitler with cars and machinery. Quite content to shut their mouths as Hitler began an ethnic cleansing that would end in barbaric genocide.

As far as the American Jews that went to live in Israel after 1948, it's difficult to believe they went to escape persecution, as many of the Jews from other places that went to Israel, in fact did. So, one can understand a certain specific resentment against American Jews who decided that it was ok, at someone else's expense, to work out their identity crisis and pick up some free airline tickets to boot.

Lanny Davis statement continued, "If she had asked all blacks to go back to Africa, what would White House Correspondents Association position be as to whether she deserved White House press room credentials -- much less a privileged honorary seat?"

Our defender of illegal coups knows very well this is not analogous. The obvious comparison is asking all European Americans to "get the hell out", and leave the land to its rightful owners, Native Americans. One could argue Mexican Americans might have an argument to stay in certain parts of the country.

The European migration to America isn't such a stretch if one thinks about it. Colonialism makes use of people fleeing religious persecution to populate their new possession . . .

At any rate, we all know what's going on here. The hyper-pro-Israel lobby, in both parties, hasn't much liked the fact that Helen Thomas dares to speak up and question that most sacred of topics, and right from the front row of the White House Press Gallery. Heck, she had the gall to ask President Obama about Israel's "secret" nuclear weapons. She even asked the current White House spokesman why the US had not condemned the Israeli attacks on the aid flotilla. No wonder they want her the hell out.

Do I think all Jews (that came after 1948) should get out of Palestine? Well, no more or less than Europeans should get out of North America, or the Portuguese should get out of Brazil, or the British should get the hell out of Australia. There does come a point where such things are simply not possible.

There's really no need anyway, there's plenty of land and resources. The only issue is, are the rights of the people who owned the land before colonization going to be respected now; is there proper compensation; do they have the right to self-determination and so on.

In the case of the Palestinians, what Israel needs to do has been made very clear in UN resolutions and in the demands of the Palestinians. In spite of the illegal blockade of Gaza, almost no one, including the Hamas representative I interviewed a few weeks ago, says the Jews have to get out. Ok there are some that say it, people get very angry after 62 years in a refugee camp, but what most Palestinians want is to live as equals with Jews in a truly democratic state.

It's way past time that we can discuss Israel and Palestine without the McCarthyite witch hunt atmosphere that has ruled for sixty years.

I said in my last blog, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism - but some is.


Helen Thomas' isn't.

You can watch my interviews with Helen Thomas here.